I N T R O D U C T I O N .

The history of the document printed below is as follows.
After the October overthrow, in the very first days, many peasant petitioners from all corners of Russia appeared at the Smolny. They all came and demanded an answer to the question: what is to be done with the land and the landlords? By that time Vladimir Ilyich had already moved from the small room in which Comrade Trotsky, the People's Commissar, was later located, to premises at the opposite end of the Smolny, where he worked until his move to Moscow. Near his office there was a rather large hall, partitioned by railings into two halves. In the partitioned half adjoining Vladimir Ilyich's study was located the "apparatus of the Council of People's Commissars," which in the early days consisted of only two or three people; beyond the railings there was constantly a huge crowd of people, including peasant petitioners. Vladimir Ilyich conversed personally with some of them and personally gave instructions. I remember well the posture characteristic of Vladimir Ilyich when he sat facing a peasant so closely that their knees touched, he himself leaning slightly forward as if listening intently and attentively, with a tender smile and a very businesslike air, questioning, probing, and giving instructions. The peasants would leave Vladimir Ilyich in rapture, saying: "now that is power, now that is ours, a real, peasant power." So many petitioners appeared that Vladimir Ilyich did not have the opportunity to converse with all of them and entrusted me (at that time I was secretary of the Council of People's Commissars) with instructing the peasants. Since the peasants were seeking precisely Lenin and wished to hear his words, I asked Vladimir Ilyich to write a letter to the peasants, which I could distribute to them. Thus the document printed below came into being. There was not yet a typist in the apparatus of the Council of People's Commissars at that time, and I remember that I myself, with great difficulty, since I could not type on a machine, had to reproduce this text in many copies and give it to Vladimir Ilyich for his signature so that I could distribute it to the peasants. The peasants, having received this letter, addressed to the very volost from which they had come, would leave completely satisfied with the "charter from Lenin himself."

Some corrections in Vladimir Ilyich's manuscript were made in the hand of Comrade Trotsky. Evidently Vladimir Ilyich gave the document to Trotsky to review—Trotsky, who often came to his study—and Trotsky made his corrections right there in Vladimir Ilyich's room. Comrade Trotsky's corrections are purely editorial in character.

In the upper left corner there is a registration notation "incoming no. 24, from 15/XI—17," made in my hand *).

N. Gorbunov.

*) I had no idea about office procedures and marked this paper as incoming since I received it from Vladimir Ilyich, whereas according to office rules it should have been registered as outgoing—as a letter from the Government to the peasants.

N. G.